We’ve waged this type of cross-border German war before, between various models within Ingolstadt, Bavaria and Stuttgart’s finest. This time around we’ve pitted the M-powered 3 against its latest challenger, the four-ringed RS5, and unlike some of the battlegrounds we’ve judged before we found very evenly-matched armour here.
On paper the RS5 has the slightly longer sword at 331kW and 430Nm versus the M3’s 309kW/400Nm, with the former a 4.2 litre versus the latter’s four-litre cubic capacity. Each is a naturally-aspirated V8s, each revs to about 8000rpm - and each on test here runs a seven-speed dual clutch transmission (optional in M3) and trick differential for improved handling.
Push the right buttons and either equally embrace their dark sides, with each also hiding some serious launch-control wizardry. But the biggest difference, some might argue, lies between all the M3’s power lighting up the rear wheels versus the RS5’s sharpened all-wheel drive quattro claws.
Jump into either car and intentions are obvious: it’s need-for-speed spec with racing wheels and G-force hugging seats, F1-style steering paddles, and more configurations for suspension, engine, throttle and steering response, and traction control than Häagen-Dazs has flavours. The Beemer though seems to be more PS3 than Atari, with even the gearshifter being electronic versus the old-school mechanical gear-lever feel in the Audi. And, having said that, the M3’s dual-clutch gearbox offers manual or auto only, versus the Audi, which in dynamic mode runs a Sports auto setting that keeps the gearbox on the boil for you. But neither’s box will change up for you in manual mode on the limiter, making for a true purist driving experience.
So let’s get to the part you’re really interested in - which is quicker? But, before I throw the numbers at you, let me explain a few things. Firstly, the launch control on the M3, which worked every time, still doesn’t seem to manage modulating wheelspin enough and there’s still what feels like an eternity of rubber blazing before it heads for the horizon.
The RS5, though we battled to get the launch control to work repeatedly, definitely has the all-wheel drive traction advantage (not to mention that it was slightly damp on the day).
The result of all this from our Vbox was a one-tenth difference on the reef in Audi’s favour at 5.5sec to 100km/h, with each car posting 13.8sec over the quarter mile.
Looks are always a subjective thing, and the recently-launched RS5, stemming from the A5’s design, is newer than the three-year-old M3. Each car had 19” rims, which suit the M3 but do the Audi no favours aesthetically. And each runs serious war-cry vocals, with zero strangulation from force-fed technology. Vocally we think the Beemer’s metallic rasp scares pedestrians more, especially on the down change.
And each of these warlords run on rails, with each tweakable within an inch of an apex thanks to the variations of slip-diffs on either. But it feels like the RS5 has the bigger brain and the M3 the bigger heart – there’s definitely more of a sense of track-bred engineering in the Bavarian brute, a greater sense of precision and seat-of-the-pants driver involvement.
But ultimately you’re spending around nine hundred grand to live with either car (R907 540 on the Audi and R882 808 on the Beemer), and that, if you ask us, is where the deciding factors lie. In six-speed manual the M3 can be a bit jerky and that hard clutch does it no favours, but the seven-speed dual clutch box is butter-on-hot-toast in either car and you can easily potter around town with a smile on your dial. The ride in the M3 is harder, though, which some may not like. It won’t jar your teeth fillings but it is harder. The fuel consumption of more than 16 litres/100km in either is also something you’d have to get used to.
So as I’m hoping you can tell by now, this hasn’t been an easy choice for us and let it be said that, contrary to anything else you may have read, these are seriously even-matched cars. We’re motoring journalists which, if you look up in a thesaurus dictionary, generally means hardcore and unsavoury, so by a rev-needle’s breadth we’re giving this battle to the M. And we mean a rev-needle’s breadth.